June 2007 :: The Brockovich Report

It is with a sense of great honor and privilege that I come before you today, as an American citizen. By the simple act of my standing here, without fear of reprisal for the free expression of my thoughts, you and I, and by extension, all Americans celebrate our great system of freedom. For we are a land of free expression, where ordinary citizens, no matter how celebrated, or how anonymous, may address members of our government in such free and open conditions. This then is a celebration of all our freedoms. This is an example of democracy at work.
So I proudly say, Good afternoon to you, members of the Department of Justice!

My name is Erin Brockovich and I am an ordinary citizen of this great country, the United States of America. Because of a movie made that had something to do with my life (but was not exactly my life story) and my work (with some unavoidable Hollywood smoothing-over, meant to cover the bumps and pot-holes of what was, in reality, a struggle that took a little longer than two hours) and with the notion of fate – how an accident that nearly killed me made me fight for a better quality of life for myself, my family and my fellow countrymen – I have become that great American phenomenon – THE REAL-LIFE CELEBRITY!

What does that mean? Well, on some levels, there is a sweetness that is purely American flavoring my life that feels more like a blessing than a happenstance. I freely admit that I have been blessed.

I am not an attorney, but I helped the law firm I worked for, win one of American jurisprudence' most astonishing victories against a public utility. And let me tell you, victory is sweet. And I managed without power; I managed without a moneyed constituency; I managed with zero corporate influence; but I managed to persevere.

I’d like to believe it was because I was on the right side of the issues and that the moral argument I put forth was infallible. On the one hand, I’ve been awarded an honorary JD and a Doctorate. And while that too is sweet, I am even more thrilled by what I have come to understand about the nature of the law, of justice that my work in the field has taught me. As a child, we are all told, warned really, that we cannot legislate morality. Of course, that proved not to be the case once I entered the very real world of judicial warfare. What is morality but the doctrine of conduct?

OF COURSE WE CAN LEGISLATE MORALITY. WE DO IT ALL THE TIME. OUR VERY SYSTEM IS BASED ON A MORAL LEGISLATIVE DOCTRINE. That doctrine is outlined quite clearly and profoundly in our guiding moral directive, The Constitution of the United States. If morality, in its simplest and perhaps most accurate definition, is doing the right thing, it is our Constitution that spells out what “the right thing” is. And it is the law which keeps our civilization operating at the high level ours does.

Our nation is guided as surely as other great peoples have been, by written moral guidelines that define our law. Moses gave his people the Ten Commandments, a set of “laws” that defined “Thou Shalt Not Steal” as both a moral and a legal statute. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the first sets of codified law, prescribed punishments to fit the crime in the ancient Mesopotamia.

In more recent times, the Magna Carta uncorporated the rights of the common man alongside those of the British Monarchy which set the stage for the laws of the United States.

The Department of Justice is a creation of the great American matrix of government. It does not decide issues of law, as many people may believe. That is the province of the Supreme Court. It does not introduce bills to become law. That is the province of Congress. It does not enact law. That is the province of the President of the United States. No, what justice does is something else, equally vital and perhaps infinitely harder: The Department of Justice insures that the machinery of established law runs smoothly and efficiently.

You are the guardian of all American right and privilege under the Constitution.
You protect us from tyranny and intimidation by upholding our individual rights by holding our rights to a standard.

You adjudicate a tangible, contemporary value on our precious Constitution that keeps it a living, throbbing document of freedom.

Or, as the great poet William Wordsworth so brilliantly put it, “The finest sense, say, of what is Honor? ‘Tis the finest sense of “Justice” the human mind can say…And guard the way…”Yes! Justice is honor and honor is the backbone of the morality of our system."

All this is why, as Erin Brockovich, private citizen, I can come here today and say, without fear, that our system doesn’t always work properly. In theory it should be perfect but in reality, nothing is. We are too often understaffed, over-burdened, and under-funded. If we allow these problems to eat away at our foundation, we are in danger of collapsing like a house of cards. We are better than that. We are stronger, smarter and more aware. That makes it all that much harder to put our heads in the sand and pretend that we don’t have problems. We do.

For example, we need to support the Clean Air Act and reduce pollution. We need to support the Clean Water Act to reduce water pollution and save our most valuable commodity. We need to enforce the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to ensure that hazardous waste is properly managed: recycled, reclaimed, contained. We need to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Lead Hazard Reduction Act, which directly protects the health and welfare of all Americans. We need to enforce the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act or Superfund, which requires those who are responsible for hazardous sites pay to clean up their mess. These are ambitious goals, but they are the necessary price of consequence and responsibility.

You know about that movie, something called “Erin Brockovich?” Hey, good title! Anyway, it’s the one that tells the story of the people in Hinkley, California who were getting sick from hexavalent chromium that they were breathing and ingesting at the hands of industry who concealed what they were doing. At the time, science had acknowledged that hex chrome was toxic by inhalation but argued heavily that there was no information on its toxicity and carcinogenic effects by ingestion.

Fortunately, even if we had to it with a lot of kicking and screaming, and believe me there was, Science caught up with the law, which means on one level that reality caught up with logic, and on another that morality allowed an imperfection to be corrected. And because this is America, we did it without a revolution in the streets. We did it by following the law. Today, the National Institute of Health has concluded that ingestion of hex chrome is causing malignant tumors. Those of us who were ahead of this curve may get to say “told you so,” but I am not interested in gloating.

I am interested in change; change for the betterment of all of our lives. There are no two sides to this argument. There is only one. The right side. The moral side. The side of life.

That is the reward for Hinkley and that is the way it should be. As for the many cases I am involved in now that are ongoing, there is no passing grade but 100. No room for compromise. When it comes to human lives, compromise means failure. Half a victory is no victory. Morality cannot be bargained over or compromised. And why not? Because that is what you ensure. The Department of Justice that protects the integrity of the law.

Ultimately, the power to make good things happen belongs to all of us. The government of our country serves the people, not the other way around. That is why I stand before you today and congratulate you, each and every one of you, for all the service you have provided for us, and that service you continue to provide now and on into the future; and that is why I urge you to use your power to enforce the laws that protect our air, our water, our land and our people.

Yes, we are all in this together, custodians of the earth, our only home. This planet is where we find shelter. It is what feeds us. It is only right that we take care of it, that we value and cherish our freedom to do so.

To neglect our responsibilities is to surrender our freedom, to abandon our morality, to give in to those who would cut corners and take advantage of situations for their own greed and profit--this is both immoral and illegal,. You cannot cut corners in the name of justice. It won’t work that way.

At the moment, I am involved in yet another dispute, this one between several known industry polluters and one very well known institution, Beverly Hills High school. Although the first twelve plaintiffs out of a thousand had their cases dismissed, this was only the opening moment of what looks to be a three act drama. Interestingly, although we may have lost the first battle, it appears that we may very well win the war. Hopefully the tide of public awareness will turn our way. Those students who came down with toxic-induced cancers can never be seen in terms of a victory. The only true victory is prevention.

Can we let such victims fall through the cracks of the law? Something has gone wrong and needs to be fixed. When the law fails us, it is a moral as well as legal failure.
The ongoing quest to which I have dedicated much of my professional career is seeking out what has gone wrong and helping to fix it. I insist on taking the high moral road. Even if I don’t always make it to the top, I must push on. Fighting for right is as important as winning. Morality is my map, my guiding light, my compass, my direction so that I don’t get completely lost on the way. I would like to give each and every one of you a copy of that map so that you could fill in your own path.
But that map is not printed on paper. It is imbedded in my spirit. And, I know, in yours. Let’s march together for the right cause–the cause of justice. Let’s lead each other down the right path so that when we look into the faces of children, into the faces of the men and women of tomorrow we can be sure that we have done everything possible to hand down to the next generation a vital ecosystem with vibrant flora and fauna, a clean earth, a pristine earth, an earth where nature again means a cool breeze of fresh air. I give to you my belief in your power to do the right thing, so that you may be successful in this non-political race which we must win; and in doing so, may you find for us all something more precious than anything that can be measured; OUR FUTURE.

I believe in the power that compels us to do right thing. I believe that ultimately, we will win; and in doing so, preserve and protect our world and our way of life. We all grew up saying those words in school – “with liberty and justice for all.” Let us leave something worthwhile for the inheritors of our planet so that they too will find courage, inspiration and a sense of higher morality in the meaning of those simple words that really say everything.

With liberty and justice for all!

Thank you.